Sunday, February 6, 2011

Sociopaths in literature: "The Trojan Prince"

"He wants to tell her all about himself, his future. He feels how fascinating he is to her -- it's as if she were attached to him by some glistening thread, which he can tug this way and that, and she'll turn her head, with its coil of heavy hair, to attend to whatever he shows her. He's aware of his own body, slim and hard beneath the dense cloth of his dark suit. It begins to fascinate him, too, this power that belongs to his looks, to his nature."

--Tessa Hadley

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Undercover

This is an account of a woman involved in eco-terroris groups taht falls in love with and marries a man who is an undercover policement sent to spy on her organizations, with hilarious parallels to empath/sociopath relationships in which the sociopath is "undercover":
[I]n June 1999, after a night in another pub, that Laura says she began to have a meaningful relationship with Boyling. "For the most part while he was undercover we had a blissfully in-love relationship," she says. "In the beginning I nearly broke it off because it almost felt too strong; he was a perfect blueprint for something I didn't even know I was looking for."
***
Jim the Van was also known as "Grumpy Jim", and Laura says her boyfriend also raised eyebrows by a seeming reluctance to get involved in a sustainable activist culture, once refusing to help pick up rubbish at a campsite. "He was interested in disrupting, not building, it surprised me but I put down to immaturity." Despite a slight sense that he did not fit in, Laura never suspected her boyfriend was a police informant – except for on one occasion.

"It's such a cliche – but it was the way he was cleaning his walking boots," she said. "I suddenly thought, 'Who is this intruder?' – and then I came to and suddenly he was Jim again. It was such a brief moment and it made such little sense that I blanked it."
***
She also says he encouraged her to cut ties with the activist community and wanted to "train" her in the art of deception. "He said the trick was to have a whole and detailed story but not tell too much of it," she says.

Boyling, however, may have struggled to balance his two lives.

"He said he missed that [activist] life – he said it was great because it was like being God. He knew everyone's secrets on both sides and got to decide what to tell who and decide upon people's fate."
***
"Jim complained one day that his superiors said there was to be no more sexual relations with activists anymore – the implicit suggestion was that they were fully aware of this before and that it hadn't been restricted in the past," Laura says.

"He was scoffing at it saying that it was impossible not to expect people to have sexual relations. He said people going in had 'needs' and I felt really insulted. He also claimed it was a necessary tool in maintaining cover."

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Faux-ciopath

"Some day neurosurgeons could offer to turn you into a psychopath if you so desired." This is great news for all of those alleged sociopath wannabes, particularly since penis enlargements seem to be little more than a pipe dream still. Selections from FuturePundit (original article here):
“Our findings show that people who have psychopathic symptoms behave as though they are suffering frontal brain damage,” said Dr. Simone Shamay-Tsoory.

At the risk of stating the obvious: If an injury to a specific part of the brain reduces empathy then empathy is a product of that part of the brain.

Not all psychopaths lack the ability to comprehend emotions felt by others. It isn't that they lack the ability to model the emotions of others. Rather, their emotional reaction to their own modeling of others is different than it is in most people. This is, by the way, why I fear future artificial intelligences. I do not expect they will have behavior-restraining empathy.

An existing explanation for such behavior suggests inability to comprehend the existence of emotions in others. However, the fact that many psychopaths act with sophistication and deceit with intention to harm others, indicates that they actually have a good grasp of the mental capacity of others - and are even capable of using that knowledge in order to cause them harm.
I almost didn't share this particular article because it lacks a certain coherency that one expects from a legitimate source. The most ridiculous part of the article is this statement: "This is, by the way, why I fear future artificial intelligences. I do not expect they will have behavior-restraining empathy." Behavior-restraining empathy? Empathy is not necessary for helpful behavior, nor does it necessarily prevent hurtful behavior, as shown humorously here. Plus, it's weird that he would say that. Hasn't he seen Bladerunner? Terminator 2? Doesn't he know that there is a little moral ambiguity involved with AI?

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

America the sociopath?

Better late than never?
Now, I've heard the impact of these releases on our foreign policy described as a meltdown, as a game-changer, and so on. I think -- I think those descriptions are fairly significantly overwrought. The fact is, governments deal with the United States because it's in their interest, not because they like us, not because they trust us, and not because they believe we can keep secrets. Many governments -- some governments deal with us because they fear us, some because they respect us, most because they need us. We are still essentially, as has been said before, the indispensable nation.
— Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates on the Wikileaks scandal, November 30, 2010
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